Ronin: Independence Imperative
by Kazakh Doom
Summary: Maya Lopez. Clint Barton. Kate Bishop. Tania Belinsky. Nikolai Krylenko. Erica Brooks. Maki Matsumoto. Qamra Spector. Stefani Grant.
1. Chapter 1

This may look like an African plain. And to a certain deluded vampire-slayer, it even FEELS like an African plain...

With wooden sais, Erica Brooks crosses what she perceives to be a plain. She knows they're hiding. She knows they're trying to fool her. And she's just about sick of it...

In front of her, she's approached by a herd of elephants. She's shocked they're not stampeding.

To her right, she's approached by a herd of buffalo. As dangerous as they are, she would've expected them to lead the cavalry charge...if this is one. (She has NO doubt that it is.)

To her left, a crash of white rhinos approach her. They don't have as much power in numbers as the former...and they're led by a cow.

Erica doesn't see anything wrong with that. Or rather, she wouldn't have to...if she wasn't sure they're here to kill her.

Behind her, there are roars and growls. Creepily, there's variety where that comes from.

Erica looks around, wooden sais drawn. She's surrounded by the Five Armies of the Big Five; the elephant, the white rhino, the buffalo, the lion, and the leopard. Alas, the lion army is mostly lionesses. Erica's shocked this world salutes reality with its magic...

Out here, buffalo are the second most dangerous game. For that, Erica charges them first.

The buffalo transform into giant ticks, turn some of their forelegs into blades, and leap all around her. They take swings at her. She jabs them in their thoraxes with her wooden sais. Like magic, their carcasses generate light, and explode...usually taking other giant ticks with them.

All around, the elephants, rhinos, lionesses, and leopards turn into the same bloodsucking pestilence. They'd lap Erica's blood as if she was a water hole...or a blood hole, rather...

Erica yells, and jabs. Ticks generate light, and blow up. She won't stop until their general's hers. And when she's done with him, she'll roast his head like a bloody marshmallow...

At long last, she's killed the last giant tick. She stands atop his abnormally large abdomen, crosses her bloody wooden sais, rests, and smiles.

She looks around, and sighs. It still looks like she's on an African plain.

"YOU CAN CUT THAT OUT NOW, MOTHERFUCKERS," she shouts. "I KNOW YOU'RE VEXING ME!"

All around, the illusion rolls back. It's apparent that she's in a great hall. She's surrounded by dead sentries. Some of them look like imports from Mojoworld…

She stands on a walkway. On either side, there are pools of blood. Some of the bodies are in them. Erica almost regrets re-stocking them.

High above it all, on a high seat, Amahl Farouk watches, and scrapes his clawed hands together. He grins. It seems the Shadow King has gotten rusty. Either that, or some of his enemies have gotten to know him better than he'd allow himself to be studied...

"Marvelous job, Ms. Brooks," he sneers, adjusting his fez. "I half-considered having this little showdown in Turkey."

Erica looks around. "We are in Turkey, aren't we?"

"Turkmenistan, actually. But don't get excited; that mirage was just a first line of defense. You will NOT hinder my ultimate line..."

"I don't care!" Erica flexes her bare arms, and points the wooden sais at him. "I'm here to slay you, and that is NOT negotiable!"

He adjusts his fez again. "I must confess, that you don't look too much like a vampire-slayer."

"Yeah?! Well YOU don't look too much like Jabba the Hutt!"

Shadow King narrows his eyes, rubs his claws together, and laughs evilly...

Erica scoffs. "Fine; you do. But I can see you! I know where you are! You will NOT delude your way out of THIS one!"

With that, Erica screams, leaps, and points her twin wooden sais at Shadow King's chest. She anticipates the moment her sais penetrate his chest flesh...ESPECIALLY his heart...

"I'm not a vampire, Ms. Brooks," he reminds her. "I don't quite get why you must use those on me..."

Erica still yells, in midair, and points the sais at his chest...

"Very well." He picks something up from near his chair, and holds it in the sunlight. "Let's see how you are against REAL ticks."

A flash of light nearly blinds Erica...and knocks her out. Last she remembers, her wooden sais are nths away from impaling Shadow King...


	2. Chapter 2

Welcome to Hell's Kitchen. Don't mind the crime rate.

Atop many of the blocks, grey gargoyles hunch, and watch over the city. Their talent is legendary...but even with the cops on patrol, stone just can't do everything...

All around Hell's Kitchen, in the shadows, beneath the ground, and in the cracks, Hand ninja's creep. They've resurrected, and they're more ready than ever. Hell's Kitchen is there's. No one's going to save it now...

From out of the shadows, a fierce force leaps. She screams in a deaf/Latina accent, and she's armed... She wears a motorcycle helmet around her head. It keeps her ears covered...and her face, too...

With a pair of submachine guns, she hacks at the ninjas. They dive her from all directions, making as much noise as they'd like. Alas, noise will not be their ally tonight...as likely as that seems. Echo, the new deviless of Hell's Kitchen, empties the mags, draws a pair of katanas, becomes a virtual speedster, and drenches the tunnels beneath Hell's Kitchen with Hand blood.

She slices off their heads. That is the ONLY way to guarantee that a Hand ninja will never return from the dead...

Sometimes, she makes Indian noises as she fights. Ah, if only she could hear herself...

There's quite a crowd tonight. But Echo's more than capable. She's slaughtered a drove of Yakuza before...and they were twice this size. Her katanas drip, as she slays them all.

At long last, she's decapitated the last one. She wanders into the middle of the alley, and stands still. She rests. She's done a lot of hard work tonight...

Alas, with her four working senses, she senses a new danger approaching. As she's imagined, the Hand's dragged in reinforcements...

From out of the sky, Sabretooth lands in the street. He smiles, bares his fangs, and retracts his mutant claws...

Echo sighs, and yawns. She's just about exhausted of Sabretooth's over-elaborate entrances...

To Sabretooth's left, he's joined by Azazel. He appears from out of nowhere, and looks like a red devil...

To his right, he's joined by Hellfire. He grabs a chain nearby, whips it, and lights it up with his own fire...

Echo smiles, and sharpens her own swords. This'll be hard...but she's sure she can clean this up before punching out for the night...

Both sides charge one another. The fight is on. Echo starts by charging the member of the trio who's the most likely to abuse her hearing.

Sabretooth and Azazel take turns attacking her. Hellfire stays in reserve, swinging his lit chain. Azazel's fast, and Sabretooth's stealthy. Both would have an advantage over Echo if she couldn't see, smell, or feel them...

Thankfully, both Sabretooth and Azazel generate a stench. And Hellfire smells like fire...

By and by, Echo becomes more capable of predicting Azazel. So, she simply puts her sword in the right place, and waits for the right time...

Azazel appears. In a flash, she runs him through the chest.

Sabretooth tries to sneak up on her. She takes up both katanas, and starts fighting him again. He's fierce. She can't hear...

Echo dupes Hellfire into slicing the top off a fire hydrant. The resulting geyser dampens his flames, and discourages Sabretooth.

Afraid of water, Sabretooth runs away, hides, and finds a burning trash barrel, where he tries to dry himself. Here, he gets to work, and plots revenge.

Drenched, Hellfire lumbers away from the geyser. He yells angrily, and runs away.

Azazel teleports to a hospital, where he treats his injuries. That got WAY too intense, even for him...

Echo escapes, in the chaos. She mounts a block, and perches between two gargoyles.

Beneath her, Hell's Kitchen sleeps. Not too far away, the geyser of the sliced-off fire hydrant makes a lot of expensive white noise...

Up here, Echo removes her helmet. She's got notches in her ears. She's also got a white handprint tattooed across her face. There's a steamy story, as to how she got it...but that'll just have to wait.

Tonight, the deviless of Hell's Kitchen keeps a vigilant eye out for danger. Because of her, Hell's Kitchen isn't so much like hell. At least not for civilians...


	3. Chapter 3

This is Doha. It's a fine city of capitalism, and Arabian Islam.

On the top story of a very nice tower, a party is in progress. There are many turbans and veils up here. At least they have the courtesy of being multi-colored, for a party...

There's coffee and chocolate. There are liquor-free cocktails. There's camel cheese, and camel meat. Some bread from the Somali States has been imported.

And, there's hookah smoke. There's cigar smoke, as well.

There's something a bit...robotic, about this crowd. They seem fidgety, and less party-like...

On stage, the Barenaked Ladies perform. They, too, seem a bit out-of-sorts...

Up in the vaults, a window is smashed. An arrow flies from it, and hits a pillar. It's got a cable attached to it.

An archer slides down the cable, lands on the floor, and rolls across it. The guests clear a space for him.

On the stage, the Barenaked Ladies stop playing, and gape. Barton, the archer, smiles, and aims his gauntlet at Ed Robertson's chest.

"A little out of your element," he asks, "are you, Mr. Robertson? Isn't this country against your band's titular being?"

Robertson is speechless. Barton winks, and fires a dart from his gauntlet. It hits Robertson in the chest. The rest of the band backs away, as Robertson falls to the stage floor, in seeming pain...

Barton watches, as Robertson is forced to shapeshift back into who he really is: a Skrull imposter.

"I know who you all are," Barton shouts. "You can cut this act!"

Moments later, Barton begins to regret his own request. All around, the party guests get naked. Simultaneously, they shapeshift into their default Skrull shapes. They're all short, and reptilian.

There's a sultan in the center. HE shapeshifts into Super-Skrull. He stands tall, flexes his Thing-like arms, and approaches the lone archer.

He towers over Barton. Barton almost bows.

"Fool," Super-Skrull growls, "to crash our party, or to clash with the Super-Skrull! We have puppets where you'd never believe!"

"Maybe so." Barton draws an arrow, and aims it. "But I imagine they've all got to do with the kings and high priests of the human race."

"Soon the Skrull Empire will have a new edition," Super-Skrull promises. "None who stand in our way will stand a chance!"

With that, Super-Skrull shapeshifts into a great cobra. His coils appear, all around Hawkeye, and trap him.

From above, the cobra towers, and shows its fangs to Barton. Barton smiles, and lets his arrow fly.

The cobra is fast. With one strike, he catches the arrow in midair, and breaks it.

"You'll have to do better than that," he hisses, "Hawkeye."

"I know."

Barton leaps, and evades getting ensnared by the great snake's coils. All around, all of the other Skrulls shapeshift into cobras, and aid their national hero against Hawkeye.


	4. Chapter 4

Barton's surrounded by serpents. They're all Skrulls, and they're here to subjugate the Earth before the Kree do.

With a pair of long knives, Barton fights the many coils that surround him. He slashes the fangs. Barton doesn't understand why they overrely on the snake shape. If they're shapeshifters, he'd expect them to use that better to their advantage, as he sure as hell will...

When he finally gets a breath, he fires an arrow, and lets it soar. It explodes, in mid-air, and generates a gas that weakens and blinds his many attackers.

In the confusion, Hawkeye shuts himself inside the stairwell. There, he sheds his gas mask. With one foot on the rail, he shoots an arrow in the ceiling. From it, a cable hangs.

Hanging from this cable, Hawkeye lowers himself into the abyss that the stairwell surrounds. As dangerous as this is, he's going to take the fight to the low ground...

As he rappels past a certain door, a Skrull/cobra bursts in, and dives after him. Now, Hawkeye falls.

The snake falls after him. Fangs bared and tongue out, he dives after Hawkeye. Somehow, he's falling faster than Hawkeye. This Skrull must've had a brush with the Reality Stone...

While falling, Hawkeye draws another arrow, and shoots the snake's face. The snake catches himself and hisses in pain, as the arrow sprays a dangerous chemical in his eyes.

Hawkeye's still falling. Even so, he shoots another arrow at the ceiling. It turns into a parachute, and guides the rest of Hawkeye's fall...all six levels of it.

He lands harder than he'd like to...which is fair, considering for how long it took to get that snake to stop falling after him. At least he had better luck than Gwen Stacy; not that he'd brag...

Now Hawkeye's in the catacombs. There are no skull walls down here; just cement bricks. Many of the walls are arched; as are the ceilings and floors. Arabia can really finance those big-visioned architects...

He runs to a pillar, and hides behind it. Here, he takes a breather. Once he's rested, he prepares for another Skrull attack. He can't imagine he's got much time.

They come downstairs, in their default shapes. Their standard-issue sidearm is like a high-tech squad automatic weapon. Hawkeye would hate to think that its power source is weaker than a star... Or a quasar, even...

Hmm; a quasar in Qatar! How come no one ELSE has ever thought of that?

Best he can, Hawkeye stays put. That'll be harder than it should be, if some of these traps don't work...

Some of them generate trip wires, across the halls. True to Hawkeye's expectations, one of them is tripped.

Traps go off, and many Skrulls are impaled by mini-crossbow bolts. These bolts slowly inject a toxic drug into their systems, which numbs their shapeshifting capacities.

Some of them trigger traps by running. Soon, Hawkeye likes his chances.

He leaps out from behind the pillar, and goes on the offensive with his recurve bow. Some of them try to shapeshift, and charge him. Hawkeye throws bolas at some of them, binding them. Some of these bolas have grenades for balls. They blow, and gas their captives.

One of the Skrulls half-shifts into a sphinx. Hawkeye shoots an electricity-generating arrow into their chest, stunning them with high-voltage electricity.

One of them charges Barton, having changed into a bull. Hawkeye draws a boxing glove arrow, and shoots it. It hits the Skrull in the head, and knocks them out. The bull bounces off several of the walls, resuming his default Skrull shape as he goes along.

With normal arrows, Hawkeye shoots the rest of them. Some of them hide behind the pillars. He smokes them out, and shoots them. This is starting to feel like a video game...

Alas, he soon senses that he's combed the catacombs. He's just about to put his latest arrow back into the quiver, when...

A pair of glowing yellow eyes appear, in the shadows behind him. A great cobra raises his hood high above Hawkeye, and surrounds him with his coils. Once again, Hawkeye is trapped.

Super-Skrull glares down, fangs bared. He laughs and hisses at the same time.

"We are the Skrulls," he insists. "We've got armies within armies where the one you've just slaughtered comes from!"

"I know," Hawkeye insists.

"And yet, you stand alone, defending your doomed race." He chuckles, and shakes his head. "Sometimes, I'm almost tempted to have too much faith in the races we're deployed across the galaxies to conquer."

"Well you're right to," Hawkeye insists. "You never know when one of them might fight back harder than you can!"

"Hmm; speaking of harder..." With that, Super-Skrull closes in his cobra coils, and crowd's Hawkeye. His bow is broken. Hawkeye is now trapped in Super-Skrull's coils.

Barton thrashes. He can't get loose. Super-Skrull really knows his stuff...

He opens his eyes. Super-Skrull's are changing colors...like Kaa's, in the Jungle Book's. Hence, so are Barton's, now...

"Not," Barton stammers, as he's hypnotized, "a Disney...movie...reference... Not...now..."

"Yes now," Super-Skrull hisses. "Rest easy, dear Clinton. Soon enough, you will be exploiting the hospitality of hell."

Clint doesn't remember what happens next. But he's pretty sure that his bow is still broken. His body might be too, by the time Super-Skrull/the great cobra is done with it...


	5. Chapter 5

Ah, the Changbai Mountains...in 1904. These mountains are very appealing...to both the Tsar and the Japanese Emperor. One day, they'll all be one of theirs. Someday soon, they'll go to war with each other for them.

At sea, the water never freezes. Most ships are powered by steam engines, in this day and age.

In both countries' navies, the dreadnought rules the seas. U-boats will come along later...alas, not by either of their invention...

On the Korean coast, there's a port. Locally, they call it Ryojun. Russia wants it. Japan has it.

Up the canyons of the Changbai Mountains, a motorbike drives. It hauls a red sidecar. The sidecar is MUCH more versatile than it looks. The cycle itself is black...as is dressed its rider.

He's dressed like a ronin; and to think that he's Russian. Meet Aleksey Lebedev. Usually, he's Red Guardian. On this mission, alas, he's Ronin.

In his mind, the Tsar is an asshole, and a bit of an incompetent. And he certainly doesn't have kinder things to say about the inept military officers who command the White Army. It takes good judgment to be a warrior. And tsars and generals can never be expected to have good judgment if they can't see things from the POVs of the naïve privates they command...and often waste, because of their lack of omniscience.

It's a long way, from here to danger. Japan hasn't attacked Manchuria yet...but they will. The Tsar can't prevent that from happening any better than the White Army can. That's what Lebedev is here for.

In these mountains, there are ninjas. They serve Hydra. A long time ago, in the Stone Age, Hydra served, and worshiped, a certain human/alien hybrid, who demanded sacrifices. He demanded a LOT of sacrifices. Many died for Hydra's cause; deaths that could've been avoided, if Hive hadn't been so demanding.

In the end, a swarm of humans and Inhumans worked together to banish Hive through a portal into hell...which is where Hive remains today. Only a few of those humans and Inhumans were reformed Hydra agents. Mostly, though, Hydra wants their devil back...as expensive and dangerous as he was the first time.

Thankfully, though, the Japanese faction of Hydra has no interest in re-summoning Hive. They want Manchuria, too...if not for the same relatively naïve reasons Japan itself does.

Even so, the Ronin comes to bump them off, so that they can't bump off any Manchurians. The Manchurians are a dying nation as it is, and they're lucky the Tsar ever thinks of them at all. And Japan can only do worse to them; every good Russian knows so. Lebedev is here to protect Manchuria...albeit he's no Manchurian.

Lebedev dares not take the motorbike any farther. So he caches it, loads himself for the long journey ahead, and begins his quest for the many heads of Hydra...

He's got his hood up. He's clad in black. He's got a pair of katanas, in scabbards, on his back. He's ready for Japan. And he knows that Hydra's ready for him, even if most of Japan isn't.

Moments later, they prove it. Atop a bulky glider, which bellows steam out of its rear, Hobgoblin arrives. He's a Hydra agent. He's a Japanese warrior who's been inoculated with the Hobgoblin performance-enhancer.

From up a canyon, a wolf joins them. She's Ferocia...and she's much fiercer than she looks.

Living Laser teleports into view. He's a Japanese warrior...completely made of red-glowing energy.

Robert Minoru/Wizard arrives...via technology that's bulky, but impressively functional. He wears a magnetic harness, that's electricity-powered. Steam blows out of a pack behind it.

Militant arrives, on a motorbike. He's a Japanese super-soldier, and wields a vibranium shield.

This is Hydra's Army of Evil. They've all come to confront the Ronin. Good; Ronin's ready to stop beating around the bush.

Ronin draws his blades, and prepares himself for anything. He needs to. None of these Hydra ninjas are exactly swordfighters.

Living Laser opens fire...and the fight begins.


	6. Chapter 6

Ah, the Gulf of Mexico at night. There's nothing like it. In many spots, you can't tell that this is just a gulf, and not the whole damn Atlantic...

Throughout, there are oil rigs. From them, Roxxon makes a shitload of money...as they usually do from many other semi-related industries.

From over the horizon, the full moon rises. It is now officially a beautiful night out here...for anyone who isn't lost.

From the depths, atlantean females surface, with their arms raised. Their eyes are closed. They lower their arms, and smile.

All around, others straggle. At long last, the bachelorette group is all here. And it is a very generous bachelorette group...

Once they're assembled, they start chanting. It's some of the best music that Roxxon will never hear.

_Ah, feel the light _

_From high above, it shines _

_It basks us in bliss like we've never known _

_It's easier on the eyes than the sun _

_What is this I feel, when it rises? _

_A sudden surge to express my night self? _

_The sacred halls of solitude I keep secluded _

_I am suddenly tempted to divulge _

_Humanity has liquor for that sort of thing _

_With it, they can feel the full moon all year _

_Lest they become drunks, and they soon need AA _

_But then, what's the moon to them, if not a once-a-month fling? _

_I know what you would say; once a month is for menstruation _

_But only so many women have their periods at the full moon _

_How can they? They were born on different dates. _

_As start their respective puberties _

_Ah, the gulf's waves can only amplify how we feel _

_Up and down, gently as a mother, they rock us _

_We are far from any harm _

_Or, so we feel... _

_The security is like bliss _

_Human men don't get this in Syria _

_Never more again, will most of them _

_Governments don't waste money on them, while they're at war _

_Money can't buy how we feel now _

_All we've got to do is come up, from Sweet Home Atlantis _

_To think that we'd rather be here, than diving for gold or pearls _

_Is something that SHOULD inspire spoiled human girl brats more often..._

It's some lovely chanting. Alas, as you might expect, there are others beneath the waves, who'd dare plot against them...

Twenty thousand leagues under the gulf... Okay, fine; they're not THAT deep; that's just an expression. Under the shadowy sea, a submarine emerges into view. Its cast iron hull is bulky. To either side, its screws propel it. It's got big letters on its sides, that say one word: ROXXON.

Some of the crew is Roxxon, in fact. But there are also Maggia, Reavers, Zodiac, Frightful Four, and Strikeforce BERSERKER personnel crewing this submarining vessel.

Some would expect the full moon to raise them from the depths, as the same does with the tide, at sea, twice a day... Alas, if this crew is aware of the full moon that's out tonight... Well actually, most of them are VERY aware of it. And hence, it's a miracle the quartermaster can even steer the submarine.

The QM just so happens to be Capricorn Dark...of Zodiac. He's got a bit of tolerance for the ruckus that happens aboard this ship...but only because he knows what it's like to start something one can't finish.

Without the tide, the submarine surfaces. Its top hatch opens. Villains, from all six groupings, come up topside.

From Zodiac, Cancer of Light, Cancer Dark, Pisces of Light, Pisces Dark, Scorpio, Capricorn Dark, Capricorn of Light, and Libra all wear diving gear, and dive off the port side, into the deep. Aries stays aboard. He's not really a water sign...or a mutable one, even... THAT would be the two Pisceans...

From Strikeforce BERSERKER, there are a few hvítálfar and ljósálfar...from Alfheim. They're all a little ale-drunk...but otherwise in perfect condition for a little swim through the Gulf.

From the Reavers, Wade Cole and Pretty Boy both abandon ship. Before they both do so, though, they replace some of their prosthetics with water-propelling ones...as well as underwater weaponry ones.

From the Maggia, Eel, Madame Masque, Mysterio, and Silvermane all leap overboard. Silvermane replaces some of his prosthetics with water-propelling ones...as the Reavers have. Madame Masque puts on a special mask that transforms her into Lady Poseidon, a sea goddess. Mysterio deploys a lot of submersibles, before diving in...

From the Frightful Four, Wizard, Tina Minoru, Taskmaster, Llyra, Hydro-Man, Electro, and Brute all dive in. Ms. Minoru transforms herself into a mermaid with a black tail, via the Staff of One, before diving in. With the shapeshifting factor of his elasticity, Brute transforms into a hammerhead shark, and flips overboard. Wizard's made some tech, that'll aid him in his...unusual undersea exploits. Taskmaster mimics the abilities of Namor the Sub-Mariner, while doing this... (Not the water-breathing, but everything else...little wings on ankles not withstanding...)

From Roxxon, Saboteur, Modular Man, Ivan Hess, Mad Dog, Ghost, and Coldblood all set out. They will gladly supervise this mass money-making effort, on their precious Roxxon's behalf...

Now, the full moon's in the center of the sky. And hence, all tides on all the shores of the world are at their zenith.

Under it all, the atlantean women still sing. They're having a ball. They're all so sad it'll have to end, before the night even does...

Among their rears and legs, beneath the waves, Mysterio's submersibles take their places. With deviousness, they simulate an alternate reality...

From behind one of them, Pretty Boy surfaces. He places his manly prosthetic hands on her bare shoulders, and drums them there...

"Come down, my love," he hisses, in her ear, "and I'll show you one of the BEST times Atlantis never will..."

In a trance, the atlantean obeys Pretty Boy's command. Once she does, she's lost in Mysterio's illusion.

From far away, distorted by the sea water's movements, a black shadowy figure watches, with moon-lit eyes. A cloak of darkness appears to surround her...as do many scarves of black and silvery-grey. In any other situation, she would look like a ronin. Then again, if anyone could see her, they'd have to confess that she does, in fact, look like the submarine, mystical version of a ronin...

In Mysterio's illusion, the Earth is flooded. There's nobody but atlanteans and lemurians inhabiting the planet.

All around, the coral grows like flowers. Butterfly fish and angel fish swim here and there...along with many other gorgeous fish.

Pygmy seahorses head-butt one another, within the coral. Neither one does much damage...but then, this is what an atlantean's utopian vision looks like...

Here and there, reef frequenters "swim their sharks." (The human equivalent of this idiom is "walk their dogs," of course.) All the sharks are domesticated...as are the jellyfish, and other hazardous species.

Far away, some atlantean kids play water polo...with an inflated puffer, in lieu of a ball. The puffer's spines have been blunted, and his venom has been antidote-inoculated.

All around the poor atlantean chick, male atlanteans swim around, flirtateously. They're courting her. Ah, how she loves all this...

High above, she sees her sisters...up there, singing to the moon, as if they didn't know all of this was down here. She shouts up at them, and begs for them to join her. Alas, they don't seem to hear her. So, she starts to swim up, towards them...

Outside the illusion, Eel, disguised as a garden eel in Mysterio's illusion, swims towards her leg. He's going to bite it, and sedate her with a serum replica of Mysterio's vision...which she'll resume dreaming, as soon as she passes out...

Alas, Eel freezes, as a strange feeling comes over him. His jaws are open. Her leg is within reach. And yet...

Twin katana blades later, Eel's been decapitated. All around, everyone else on Mysterio's team hasn't suspected a thing.

Ronin's going to save Mysterio for last. She'd hate for the atlantean women to see most of this...

Above, they keep singing. Down here, the atlantean is still lost in the vision. With luck, Ronin can finish before Mysterio's tempted to de-activate the illusion...

One by one, emitting silvery moonlight in her wake, Ronin draws her katanas, and butchers everyone who doesn't swim away...who's not an atlantean female.

She kills Silvermane, with her katanas. She kills Brute. She kills Wizard. She kills Wade Cole. She kills Libra. She kills Cancer of Light. She kills at least three hvítálfar, and at least three ljósálfar. She kills Modular Man. She kills Ivan Hess...

She stops behind Mysterio, and crosses her katanas in front of his throat. All around, the rest of the shark pack freezes.

Within the illusion, the male atlanteans are distracted, looking off in the distance...at something their would-be victim can't see. She seems confused. She keeps trading looks between these hot dudes, and her sisters way up there, somehow not noticing the wonderful world that there is down here... She's wondering if Earth's getting invaded by extraterrestrials...

Back out there, Ronin has fixed up a standoff. She doesn't yield; neither does the shark pack.

"Leave," her moony voice hoots, throughout the sea. "Or your Master of Dreams will lose his head!" A long pause follows. "I'VE ALREADY LOST MINE!"

In a flash, the shark pack leaves. Only the atlantean chicks remain.

"Now," Ronin hoots, keeping the katanas where they are, "de-activate your vision. LET...HER...GO!"

Mysterio nods, and turns a pair of switches on his belt. He puts up an emergency cloaking device around him and Ronin, so the waking atlantean won't see them.

"Good boy," Ronin croons. "Now...you have an hour to leave. If you are not gone by then, you will join fifteen of your late comrades in the afterlife. And I DON'T mean Alfheim...as much as I'd rather."

Mysterio nods. Ronin smiles, and un-crosses the katanas. Keeping the cloak around himself, Mysterio swims away.

Nearby, the atlantean girl seems confused. Nonetheless, she rejoins her sisters at the surface.

The moon's almost set. It's just about time for everyone here to get going.

Like an underwater wraith, Ronin swims back to where she comes from. Or rather, she swims somewhere where she can rest.

Out here, that happens to be a Roxxon oil rig. In the sky, the full moon has just about set...and will begin darkening, starting tomorrow night...

Ronin breaches, and flies around the rig, like a streaming black-and-silver comet. Sometimes, she just can't help but admire herself. On the rig, nobody seems to see her...

Within the tower, she settles down, and materializes into herself. She stands on a crossed bar, high above the gulf surface, looking down on a great height. She wears no shoes.

She peels her hood back...revealing the face of Qamra Spector. In the Ultimate Marvel universe, she's also been known as Moon Knight, Paladin, Stefani Grant, and Blondie...with the last of which being the least merited of them all. She is a Jew, after all...

Qamra would pat herself on the back...if this Ronin costume wasn't so darn tight around her. Even so, she's kept a bunch of mercs from getting paid to kidnap a poor helpless little atlantean girl...assuming they would've stopped at just one. Alas, Qamra's PRETTY sure they won't stop. Nope; as long as there is money, there will be other attempts. At least in the meantime, Qamra can make sure that that money won't be Roxxon's.

The last flicker of moonlight vanishes, over the horizon. Once again, it's pitch black over the Gulf of Mexico.

From the sky, fifteen red comets fall; funeral candles, for the fifteen villains who've been slain tonight. Qamra only smiles, sadly. At least those aren't funeral candles for atlantean girls...or ronins...


	7. Chapter 7

Welcome to the planet Skrullos. Here, nothing stays the same...although there are a few constants. Here, the stronger species are reptiles/reptilian. And monkeys, lemurs, and lorises are among the weaker species.

Their oceans are vast. They're used to that. The Skrulls, after all, rule an interplanetary empire. To them, the planets they rule are like islands in a sea...considering how big the voids between them are.

Out here, there are islands; actual islands. For a Skrull, this wouldn't be such a hard place to live. But for a human, it would pose a challenge.

Defeated, Clint Barton now lies in the shallows of a sea that surrounds this island...barely clad only in rags that the Skrulls would know as prison attire. He's been abducted. And whether by their own will or by an accident's, Clint's been jettisoned into their world.

Clint doesn't yet know where he is...although the slightly lesser gravity, than what he's used to, is enough to tell him that Earth is too far away for him to contact for help.

Ugh; any help that could come to his aid would likely be either Skrull, or worse. Nonetheless, this is nothing he can't get used to. He's a master archer, after all. All he's gotta do is transcend everything.

He soon finds out that there are no small fish in these seas. Alas, that's merely the best part of it. He soon finds out that going back to Stone Age tech, when you're used to SHIELD tech, isn't as easy as one would think. For Barton, this should be "back to basics." And yet...sometimes, you can't go back, after you've been forward.

Clint trains himself to not expect to. The coffee cup is broken; he can put it back together, but it'll never be the same as it was. That's how death and rebirth work...and that's how the human soul works.

Clint's pretty sure that the Skrulls know that, too... Alas, if only they wanted to rule Earth a bit less...

It takes Clint a while to improvise the elements he needs for a longbow...but he does. He misses his recurve bows... But as long as he can't get back to Earth anytime soon, he's gotta try to make this work.

The fire takes him a while, too. Some of the reptiles here are frightening...and the insects are even worse.

At last, Clint spears his first fish. Good; it's about damn time. He's starving.

Fortunately, he's already lit his first fire. It's quite demanding to feed...but at least it's lit. Clint's still got sore and bandaged hands to show for.

One bite at a time, he eats the fish. He can't say that this is the best meal that he's had...but it's certainly a high-ranker. He sure hopes the Skrulls aren't fond of this species... But then, as much as they've tried to subjugate Earth, and as often as the Avengers have had to stop them from doing so, Clint should be less sympathetic towards them.

One time, a Skrull impersonated Clint's wife. Clint still has NO idea how that Skrull was so easy to kill...but he's very glad it was...albeit a bit sadder that his wife was never found.

Bobbi Morse has been hitting on him a lot, lately. Alas, Clint just can't settle down, when the world's militaries aren't doing enough to keep villains from getting ahead. That's why he became the Ronin. And he doesn't plan to stop until he can rest assured that he's doing everything that the world's MoDs are too lazy and cowardly to do themselves.

Ah, how Clint misses his samurai steel... Alas, it's going to have to wait until another opportunity to acquire said steel comes along. He doesn't expect that to happen soon...as much as he doesn't doubt that the Skrulls would go ga-ga for the katana, if they knew what it was for. Then again, if a race is used to space battles, than a katana probably wouldn't be of much use to them.

And yes, Clint was used to trick arrows, before he was air-dropped into this way of life... And yet, look how easily he's adapted...

The Skrulls are adaptors, too... And yet, Clint's got a feeling that adapting to another person's appearance is about as limitless as their adaptability gets.

By day, on the shores, he keeps bow-fishing for fish. At least these fish are somewhat foolish. Clint can still shoot them. He hopes they stay that way.

Clint does not yet have the will to start hunting the island's more dangerous reptiles. He's pretty sure he'll have to, at some point. Hell, most days, he feels like an ant on this island...considering how much influence he doesn't have over everything else that lives here.

Well, Clint's having a ball, bow-fishing...best he can, considering that he'd rather be back on Earth, clad in black and wielding a pair of katanas...when something distracts his gaze. And she should. She's an under-dressed redhead...whose bikini reminds Clint a bit of hellfire.

She approaches, him, and stops. Clint watches, with a hawk's eye, in sweet anticipation... And then, she falls over...right where he was, when he first woke up here.

Clint doesn't hesitate. By her arms, he hauls her to shore. He starts to check her, to see if she needs chest compressions, only to discover two things. First, her hooters are so distracting, he forgets to do chest compressions on her. And second, he already knows her.

"Patsy," he whispers, to himself. "Patsy Walker..." He acknowledges a flaming cat tattoo on her... Well; that part's not important. "Hellcat," Clint adds.

She wakes, and sputters up a fountain of water, nearly drowning Clint. Once she sobers up and looks around, she gives Clint a strange stare.

"Clint?!" She adjusts her own hair. "Did they abduct you, too?"

From far away, they hear a loud and scary noise. From the treetops of the island forest, birds scatter. That's big; out here, the birds are only a little less scarier than the reptiles.

Clint knows that noise; he's heard much louder versions of it in the caves, whenever he's tried to sleep in them. This island has dragons...and that was SO one of them.

"THAT," Patsy says, "doesn't sound good..."

"O, trust me," Clint gets up behind her, and tries to creep away, while droving her. "It SO isn't..."

They take shelter. Clint doesn't expect them to stay too many steps ahead of the predators for much longer. And with good reason: whether Clint wants to think so or not, he's just picked up a ball-and-chain. He just wishes it was Thunderball's...

But then, Patsy shouldn't be TOO much of a ball-and-chain; Clint knows her from their Avengers days. Alas, Clint also knows that Patsy's done some deserved time in the Raft...and that she was still there, to his knowledge, at about the time he was abducted by the Skrulls...

Maybe...the Skrulls broke her out? Alas, aside from sex, Clint has trouble imagining why the Skrulls would want to do that...unless they meant for Hellcat to kill a Kree warlord they all hated...and even THAT'S a longshot, considering how much of an individualist Patsy can be...


	8. Chapter 8

Ah, the North Atlantic. There's nothing like it. And good times are nothing like it...especially not in the winter.

Even so, the North Atlantic is stormy all year. At least nowadays, it harbors a sensitive secret...and I DON'T mean the _Titanic_.

Just beneath the rain-absorbing and wave-generating surface, which occasionally takes on too much electricity for a shark each time a stray lightning bolt hits a very big wave, a floating island treads water. It's raft-shaped, and man-made. For that reason, it's called the Raft.

All around it, the ocean pounds with the storms. Inside, some of the most dangerous people in the world, who're mostly mutants, Inhumans, and human mutates, are kept under lock and key...figuratively speaking.

Inside, the guards patrol their regular routes within the raft's corridors. There are a lot of corridors in here. Thankfully, they're not all lined with full cells...or even cells. Even so, the world would be up a creek without a paddle...or even outside, in that very ocean without a compass...without the security of the Raft.

Many who live here deserve to be here. Once such inmate is Trish Walker...as Jessica Jones has reluctantly deemed her.

She sits in her cell, alone. Mostly, she's in a catatonic state these days. Sometimes the guards joke about throwing her off one of the balconies, to see if the Hellcat still lands on her feet. But then, the Raft would hate for humanity to think that the guards here aren't humane to the inmates...as much as the inmates probably don't deserve humane treatment.

Some of the inmates aren't even human. A few are powered aliens, who can't seem to leave this blue marble alone.

In here, Trish couldn't be more upset with how under-stocked the Raft is. She's pretty certain that there are more villains out there than what global security seems to think...or even what the Avengers, X-Men, Fantastic Four, and Illuminati seem to think...

This is another reality of the Marvel multiverse. It's a neighbor of Earth-199999. Here, Walker is a blonde. And she goes by Trish.

In the halls, with gloved hands, a guard makes his rounds, checking all of the doorknobs to see if they're locked. He passes one, after he's seen that it's locked.

He slows, and looks around. He's got an eerie feeling...that he's not sure how to describe... And yet, somehow, shedding seems to be out of the...

He turns, and looks around. Sure enough, the door he just checked is open. He's not sure how; he couldn't have hesitated for THAT long. Even so, whoever did open the door was very noiseless when they did so.

He should call for backup...but doesn't. It's just as well. Backup won't come; his opponent has made sure of that.

He flicks on a flashlight, and creeps into the open room. Inside, there's a slash, and a cry of agony...and a bunch of blood splatters through the open doorway, leaving its mark all over the floor of the hall.

From a trap door in the deck of Trish's cell, a package is delivered to her. Trish blinks, looks around, gets on her knees, and rips the package apart, with hellish feline ferocity. She even manages to make cat noises, while doing so.

Inside, she finds a black robe. It's Japanese...and it's a ronin's robe.

In the control room of the prison, guards stay on duty. They monitor everything, with a hawk's eye. They're about to have some competition...whether they can afford it or not.

One of them gets a message on their comms. They go into another room to check...and never come back. Another does, and leaves. He never comes back either.

Before long, there's only one guard left in the control room. He keeps working...as if undisturbed by the fact that he's been rendered alone by what only looks like pure chance, on the surface.

Moments later, there's a slashing noise, and his blood is splattered all over the glass wall before him. His head hits the deck, and rolls over it.

With a gloved hand, a hooded ronin surfs the Raft's intranet for the location of Walker's prison cell, finds it, hacks into its security, and disables it.

Moments later, Trish's cell is empty. The empty package, in which the ronin's robe came in, is the only trace she's left...other than her DNA in the toilet and in the bedding.

From a foggy height, a hooded figure wearing the same ronin's robe falls. Onto one of the lower decks, she lands on all fours. Beneath the hood, a pair of sinister eyes shine. The Hellcat is back...as the Ronin.

From below the surface, the Raft surfaces. Portals open between the topside flight decks and the bad weather aloft.

Without much regard for this bad weather, a twin-rotor aircraft starts up its engines. It rises, and flies away. Behind them, the Raft re-submerges.

In the cockpit, the two pilots sit next to one another. They're both dressed as ronins. They both still have their hoods up.

Trish takes off hers, and breathes relief. "That was fun," she admits. "So...do I get a pair of swords, too?"

The other ronin removes his hood, revealing the face of Clint Barton. In this reality, Clint is a brunet. (He's a blond, on Earth-616.) "It's in the cargo hold," she tells her. "Sorry I couldn't custom-make it, but...ronins aren't really supposed to pride themselves in their senses of identity."

Trish nods, comprehendingly. "I can see that." She stands, and moves towards the hold. "Not sure if I can adapt to that, but... I like my chances a whole lot better than if I was still stuck in the Raft." She hesitates, and turns around. "Thanks for this, BTW. This has been like hell for me...and for once, I don't mean that as a compliment."

Clint only nods, and keeps flying.

In the cargo hold, Trish finds her treasure: a pair of authentic katanas...complete with crossed scabbards. They're not sharpened...but Trish's not worried about that.

They aren't custom-made...but one does have a design on its blade. It's of a crouching cat. The design on the other katana's blade is that of a bident; like Pluto's and Hades's.

She handles them...and feels their power channel through her Hellcat flesh. With the power of the Ronin in her paws...she could make one Hell of a difference, everywhere where the world's military forces are too wussy to make the same difference...


	9. Chapter 9

Lester wakes...and looks down. He's in freefall...over K'un-Zi.

Below him, a forest looms. It's still a long way down...but getting closer by the second.

Lester rolls over, and looks around in the sky, for any trace of who's dumped him out here. Alas, if they were here before, they're gone now.

Lester sees a lake. Using his talents as a mantis kung fu master, he glides through the air, towards the lake shores. Below him, the forest passes.

Soon, he's in freefall over a MUCH softer landing. It's getting closer. Lester semi-anticipates the splashdown...

It hurts a bit...but not too much. Beneath the surface, the lakes waters slow his fall. This is a very deep lake; like Crater Lake in Oregon...only deeper.

Down there, giant catfish slither along the lake bottom. Their dorsal fins are like sails.

Around Lester, carps and minnows swim. They're very fleshy, here in K'un-Zi.

Around him, a school of river dolphins pass. Their sonar gives Lester a splitting headache. All around him, they partake in the carps. Lester's tempted to, himself. Alas, if only he didn't risk starting a fight with a hungry bull dolphin...

They swim past, and leave Lester alone. Beneath the surface, Lester struggles to maintain his sanity, and treads water...

He turns...and looks right into the snorkel-shaped nose of a soft-shelled river turtle. It's huge. Lester had no idea soft-shelled turtles could grow so big...

They stare at one another. Lester's not sure why he's doing this, but... He's sure it matters...

The turtle's eyes light up bright yellow. So do Lester's. Around them, time slows. They can't stop staring at one another.

The turtle blinks, and swims away. Lester feels dizzy. His lungs ache. So, he swims to the surface, and takes a breath.

Focusing on a part of the shore, Lester loses control, and swims there. Once there, he climbs ashore, and perches on a log. He looks around. He hasn't alerted the cavalry yet...but he expects to...

Around him, a strange feeling overcomes him...as everything, all around him, grows ten thousand times bigger than it was before. Around him, the top of the log is now like a plain. Before him, a knob atop the log is like a mountain. And a limb, that still sticks out of it, is like a tree...with a flag-sized leaf hanging from it.

Lester coughs up a lot of water...after having hesitated for a prolonged moment, to take this all in. And it is still, to this moment, a VERY lot to take in...

From up the log, a new danger creeps. She's yellow...and she's in heat.

As soon as Lester can breathe again, he starts to stand...and beholds something he's dreamt of for a long time...and yet, never, at the same time.

It's a yellow mantis. To her, Lester is like a fly. In front of her, she holds her pointed forelegs. She's a master of precision...as Lester would know. Not only does Lester know marksmanship (i.e. when he's big enough to handle a pistol), but he knows mantis kung fu. This shouldn't be too hard. But then, it'd be a hell of a lot easier, if Lester were about the mantis's size...or hell, even his normal one.

Gradually, Lester backs away. The mantis follows him, of course.

He sees a speck of gravel. In a flash, he grabs it, and hurls it. With precision, she swipes her forearm, and dodges Lester's blow. Ugh; this is going to be harder than Lester thought.

Lester keeps backing...until he passes a sword-shaped pebble. He takes it up, speeds, leaps, and charges the she-mantis. Super-fast and super-precise, she tries to deflect him...

Alas, Lester knows his craft, and deflects her blow. Not only this, but he's arranged his spring to where if she tried to deflect it (and he KNEW she would), she'd inadvertently send him right towards her heart.

Into the mantis's thorax, Lester plunges the sharp piece of gravel. Via gravity, he inadvertently builds a furrow on the underside of her thorax...which is more the fore side, considering her anatomy. From here, he struggles to hang on, as she thrashes around, struggling to think of a way to get shed of him...

Having made a slit, Lester grins, crawls into the slit, and tunnels his way into her, to her heart. Once he's in, she's doomed. All he's gotta do is follow the distant drums to her heart, and...

He's found it. With the same piece of gravel, he improvises a knife, and cuts every single vessel of blood that connects her ticker to the rest of her body.

Lester hates to do this. He never tells anyone this, but...he has sex fantasies, of being dominated by less-murderous she-mantises, BDSM-style. Alas, the reality of she-mantises is that they decapitate all of their mates, no matter how much she likes them. Lester isn't even sure she saw him as a potential mate. She probably just saw him as food...

It's messy in here...but Lester's faced worse. Soon, all of her heartstrings will be cut...

On the log, she fatigues...and falls off of it. She lies on her side, dying...

From the slit in her chest, her heart is ejected...clean-cut. Covered in mantis blood, Lester emerges, victorious. He sits around, and watches the heart beat its last. And then he vamooses...before a bird comes along and eats who he's just disheartened. Depending on the bird's size, it just might mistake Lester for a bug.

And now, Lester's new life begins...as a bug in the forests of K'un-Zi. With luck, he'll find a dog's fur, to be a flea in. Without it, he'll join an ant colony...or get eaten by a pangolin.

Daredevil back in Hell's Kitchen, at least, probably wouldn't mind that. Even so, anyone else would expect Lester to have a sense of self-preservation...even if, as a warrior and merc, he's doomed to die by the designated marksman's bullet...or, more likely, the sniper's bullet.

Lester should be a sniper. He's got the marksmanship skills for it... He's also always dreamt of taking on Agent Zero, the mutant, in a shooting contest.


	10. Chapter 10

Ah, Utah. O, how the technology out here never improves...

Here and there, there are Shoshone reservations. Here, the Shoshones live like primitives, surrounded by mountain springs and softwood forests; just like the ones their ancestors once basked in, long before the Mormons came and took a heap away from them...

Over Utah, the skies are big. But then, EVERYTHING'S big, on this side of the Rockies...

From over a cloud, a phalanx of androids flies...in formation. Ultron's at the spearhead. Ram horns grow from both sides of his head.

Among his sentries, Whirlwind flies. So does Radioactive Man, like a big flaming ball of green light. Around him, the sentries give him a wide berth.

Baron Zemo's up here, too...in a warplane. The weapons bay is stocked with Adhesive-X...his signature weapon.

Via sound-generating prosthetics, Klaw's among the phalanx, too. He's in a wingsuit. Each time he glides too low, he gives the ground a go, with a lot of sound. This lifts him up, and keeps him in the game.

They're all coming up on the Shoshone reservation. Below, the Masters can see their residences...primitive caves, among a superior race's better-built homes...

Klaw goes first. He glides low, screams via his arm, and shatters house after house to bits. Everywhere, Shoshones run for cover.

Zemo goes next. He flies low, and unleashes his munitions. They shoot Adhesive-X webs everywhere, pinning random Shoshones down, and rendering them helpless against what follows.

Whirlwind goes next. He hovers over the reservation, and generates an F5 tornado. This is one of the biggest he's ever made; it's five miles wide, and rips everything off the ground...except the locals who've been pinned by Zemo's Adhesive-X.

Zemo and Klaw both catch winds within the tornado, and ride them. They both struggle to avoid hazardous unions with debris.

Ultron's sentries fall in step with the winds, too. They circle in, like an army of wraiths attacking a village from the sky. Via telekinesis, they attack everything...and everyone.

This way, the Masters have a ball. They rip the whole damn Indian reservation apart, humiliating the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and bringing MUCH physical harm to the locals.

At last, this gets boring. Whirlwind and Ultron retreat, causing the tornado to die. Everything falls to the ground, that was swept up in the storm's helix of currents.

To add a finishing touch, Radioactive Man swoops in. He dive-bombs the ground, several times, and sets everything on fire. It's going to take the Shoshone's WAY too long to recover from this...

From space, this spot in Utah looks like a reverse-sunspot. A sunspot is an area of shadow on the sun's surface; THIS is an area of radioactive light, glowing from a planet's surface.

Victorious, the Masters are hangar-ward bound. Some of them sing a victory march, as they fly...

From behind them, a shadow in a black hawk-winged harness tails them. Via radar, Ultron, Klaw, and Zemo sense this. Via virtual omniscience, Radioactive Man also senses this.

So, they turn around, and prepare to face the threat. Incapable of hovering, Zemo and Klaw both make wide O-turns. (A U-turn is very hard to make, at their airspeeds.)

Whirlwind, who hasn't sensed a thing, keeps on flying. Moments will pass, before he looks around, and sees that he's alone.

It's Hellhawk. She wears a black-winged harness...and sports golden cat roundels all over her costume.

From her wings, she releases air-to-air missiles. They're all arrow-shaped.

Via telekinesis, Ultron and his sentries stop these missiles in mid-air. They wait until they run out of fuel...and then drop them.

Alas, Hellhawk was prepared for this. As they fall, they release nanites. They swarm up into the private parts of Ultron's sentries, and send a deadly amount of electricity through their central systems.

Like dead birds from the sky, many of Ultron's sentries fall to the Earth. And the Arches of Utah are VERY far beneath this spot...

This leaves Hellhawk alone with Radioactive Man. Like a planet around a star, she flies in circles around him.

She pulls out a flamethrower, and distracts him, by spraying him with her fire. While his guard is down, she swings, and throws a pair of bolas.

Radioactive Man tires...and dims. The bolas become a power-dampening net, and entangle him.

Being dragged down via a pair of balls-and-chain, Igor Stancheck yells in terror, thrashing to get loose. He can't, of course.

Beneath him, the bola balls guide themselves towards a lake. Here, Radioactive Man is submerged...and kept from using his powers. Once the balls hit rock bottom, they automatically weaken the power-dampening nanites in the bola's netting, so that at least Radioactive Man will be able to use his powers to breathe underwater.

Back in the sky, Zemo finishes making his round first. He shoots an Adhesive-X projectile. Hellhawk out-maneuvers it, and flies right over Zemo's head. Zemo barely has time to react. Even so, he ejects, moments before the Adhesive-X renders his warplane a crashing-and-burning waiting to happen.

As he falls, he pulls a ring on his pack...and his green parachute inflates. Its top bears the yellow octopus of Hydra.

Hellhawk's tempted to rip Zemo's chute to shreds, and let him fall to his death... But decides to be a heroine, and doesn't.

Klaw comes back around, points his arm, and sends a sonic blast towards Hellhawk. Just in time, Hellhawk releases another trick-missile. This one lights up with fire, as the wave of deafening noise surrounds it. While ablaze, it resists the sound waves, and strikes Klaw in the prosthetics, where a virus hacks them.

Like a rock, he plummets through the sky, struggling to counter-hack Hellhawk's hacking. He can't stay airborne...but he can use his wingsuit, assuming it doesn't rip, to slow his own fall.

Whirlwind flies on, still unaware he's alone. From behind him, Hellhawk sneaks up.

Liking her chances, she takes out a black recurve bow. The bow has a yellow cat design on both sides of it. She closes her submissive eye, and aims one of her yellow-fletched and yellow-headed arrows at the mutant's back. She's right behind Whirlwind; she might as well be shooting at a stationery target.

She releases the arrow. It glows, like hellfire, as it flies to its mark...

Too late, Whirlwind looks around, through the slits in his helmet, and realizes he's alone. Moments later, the arrow hits him...right in his cerebellum.

With his cerebellum injured, he can't move. Hence, he starts falling. He looks funny, falling with an arrow in the back of his neck. Its head sliced right through his helmet's armor.

Victorious, Hellhawk pulls out her twin flamethrowers, blows them, and flies a victory lap around one of Utah's Arches. Once she has, she puts her flamethrowers away, and looks for somewhere to land...

Far away, on a fence, a ferruginous hawk perches on the top wire of a barbed wire fence. Her species is the biggest harrier species in North America.

Farther up the fence, a few kittens play with one another. They'll never grow up; they're Cats R' Us kittens from hell...

The hawk stands boldly, as a semi-truck passes by. Its trailer has got a pair of "Stark International" logos painted on either side of it.

Without the driver's permission, Hellhawk flies low, over the truck, and lands atop its trailer. Up here, she turns aft, and looks around. Nobody's watching.

So, she removes her ronin hood...revealing the face of Patsy Barton. This is one of the Warp Worlds of the Marvel multiverse. On Earth-616, Ms. Barton has two doppelgangers: Clint Barton/Hawkeye and Patsy Walker/Hellcat. She takes after Barton.

Below her, the semi-truck makes a sharp turn. Ms. Barton struggles to keep her balance. She works with this; she rolls across the top, falls over the outward side of the trailer's turn, and uses a cable and grappling hook to hang in place, while the driver makes the turn. Moments before he straightens out, she climbs back up to the top of the trailer...where he can't see her.

The truck passes a pasture...where Klaw, who's landed there via his wingsuit, is surrounded by cattle and cattle dung. He swears to himself, as he struggles to re-program his prosthetics...

For laughs, Ms. Barton takes up a recurve bow, aims an incendiary arrow, and shoots. She sets some of the dung ablaze, causing the cattle to stampede and frightening Klaw...who swears in Flemish.

The flames give Ms. Barton a screen...although she puts her Ronin hood back up, JIC. She'd hate for Klaw to learn her secret identity while she was just having a little fun, especially if it was at his expense...

"He'd love the smell of napalm in the morning," Ms. Barton mutters, "if only he was a better sport."

"IT'S FUCKING 3 IN THE AFTERNOON," he shouts, across the land. "IT'S WAY TOO EARLY FOR NAPALM...OR EVEN A FUCKING CRASH-LANDING!"

Under her hood, Ms. Barton gapes...and stays low, under her hood. "OMG," she mutters. "Can he read minds, now?!"


End file.
